Facebook Buys Acrylic Software, A Gorgeous Mac And iOS App Maker

Following Google’s acquisition of Sparrow earlier today, Acrylic Software has announced that it has been bought by Facebook. Acrylic makes a Mac/iPad RSS reader app called Pulp and Mac/iPhone app called Wallet. As a development firm known for its top notch design work and attention to detail, the Acrylic team will be joining Facebook’s design team.

Future development of Pulp and Wallet has stopped, but Acrylic will continue to support its users and keep its apps available for download.

Dustin MacDonald of Acrylic Software:

I’m happy to announce today that we’ve packed up our small Vancouver studio and will be making the move to San Francisco in the coming weeks to join the design team at Facebook.

For the past four years, we’ve worked tirelessly on creating truly awesome products with a focus on innovation and great design, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve been able to accomplish during that time. Our flagship apps, Wallet and Pulp, have been used and loved by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Building these products has been a fun and exciting ride, but the time has come to move on to newer and bigger challenges.

Facebook is an invaluable service that we all use daily, and a company I believe is one of the most innovative and important around today. After visiting late last year, I discovered that we shared many of the same core product design goals and principles, and it soon became obvious that it was a natural fit. Simply put, there’s an opportunity at Facebook to have a big impact in many people’s lives. More importantly, Facebook is full of extremely talented people who will be able to help realize its full potential in the years to come.

Our products and services have not been acquired by Facebook, and while there are no plans for further development on them, Wallet and Pulp will continue to remain available for download and purchase in their current form. We’ll certainly be the first to let you know of any updates or changes here in the future.

A special thanks to all of our customers and supporters who have helped us grow and build the best products possible throughout the last four years. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.

Facebook is allegedly working to give its flagship iPhone app a complete revamp under the hood. The app will be much faster than the current version, and it’s rumored that Facebook will release the new version this summer. Another rumor said that Facebook is hiring former Apple engineers to work on a new smartphone.

It’s unclear if the Acrylic team will be working on future designs of Facebook’s iOS apps, but given the kind of work Acrylic is known for, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

While Facebook has been snatching up smaller startups and mobile development firms left and right, its most notable purchase to date is the $2 billion acquisition of Instagram that has yet to be approved by the FTC.

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I hope this team will be on development for the iOS app. Its beyond horrible. Worst, most popular app ever. Its faster to access FB via Chrome or Safari.

kramer_jk

A lot of people are really down on Facebook because of their stock price or other meaningless short term considerations, but they are building the best possible team and are set up nicely for the future. Facebook is faced with some very difficult design decisions (building a platform that satisfies a billion+ people with different needs) so adding more design talent is critical for Facebook. The reason that Facebook is valued so highly and is still set up nicely for the future isn’t just because of their current market dominance in social networking, its their possibility for entering and dominating other fields like search, ecommerce, entertainment, news, platforms, and others as well. Look at how much social data that Facebook has access to that nobody else in the world has access to. And if you think that Facebook can’t compete with somebody like Google in search, just look at how much attention they’ve captured from businesses already – big brands are promoting Facebook URLs in their television advertisements, there’s a plethora of companies listed at http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com that do nothing other than promote Facebook business pages, and Facebook is nearing a billion active users. This would not be happening if Facebook wasn’t completely dominant in what they are doing. As further proof of this, look at how much effort Google is putting into trying to get Google+ jumpstarted in a hurry. They know that this has to happen soon because if Facebook includes a real search feature within Facebook, then a big part of the reason to use Google search will be gone and that has to be a long-term problem for them. But I think there’s a lot more possibilities for commerce than just Facebook, but it is a big part of where the market is heading.